PROJECT: Star-Lord Blasters

WARNING: Nerdy Post Alert!

Guardians of the Galaxy is my very favorite Marvel movie. The characters, the writing, the music are all absolutely perfect, I laugh and cry every time I watch it.
Both of them. 

I've wanted to do some form of a Guardians video for my YT channel for a very long time, and have had a few ideas down in a notebook somewhere since the first movie released. 

Obviously, Rocket and Groot could be puppets, that's just a given. 

I even built a raccoon puppet for a GOTG video that never happened, he ultimately became a character called Fernando that pops up from time to time in a lot of things I do...

I'd thought long and hard about who would play Star-Lord before realizing that I could do it myself because I could hide behind the one of the coolest movie helmets of all-time...

And so, the hunt was on for the costume parts and pieces! 

Audrey bought me a beautiful coat and t-shirt from Hot Topic, and I ordered a helmet and walk-man from X-Coser (although, now that it's been so long Marvel Legends' new replica helmet will be replacing it).

The one thing I couldn't find were Star-Lord's double-barreled Blasters, and I had no idea how hard it would be to track them down...

First and foremost, I'd like to express my pure disgust and annoyance that all of the blasters I could find are sold separately, which is either genius or pure evil of the toy companies. Star-Lord has two blasters so every kid (or kid at heart) is going to need a pair to complete their ensemble...

Someone write to Disney on that one! 

There were Nerf guns released with the first film, but Cosplayers snatched them up and they all disappeared rather quickly. The last time I checked they were going for around $75 each on eBay, and that's too crazy even for me... 

The first pair of blasters I tracked down and ordered through Amazon were made by a company called Disguise. It wasn't noted in any of the listings online, but these are made to pair with a children's Halloween costume, so I had no clue how small they were until they were delivered. I painted over the safety orange anyway, since it was better than nothing...

These next blasters were released with the new batch of toys for Vol. 2, and were off-model but closer to the right size. 

BUT they were $20 each, so I waited for them to hit the discount bin...

I waited (not so) patiently and eventually bought myself a pair for $10, but still wasn't too pumped about them. They sat in my to-do bin for a while... and are probably still there...

It's no secret how much I look forward to Halloween every year and will spend hours going through every rack in any store's seasonal department, and this year's crop of costumes and props was pretty lack-luster...

Then I found these:

I'm pretty sure I made some kind of embarrassing squealing noise, and probably startled some of the other shoppers, when I rounded the corner and saw these florescent beauties...

The price was right and they were the near-perfect size; last year's Stormtrooper Blasters and Batman Grappling Guns are nothing compared to this crazy/lucky find!

I didn't even stop my shopping cart from rolling to grab two.

A few coats of three different spray-paints and voila!

Sure, they still aren't perfect, but I'm very pleased with how this Scavenger Hunt finally wrapped up.

The video is still a work-in-progress, now to get started on Gamora...

More soon,

Avery